| | My parents were/are civil rights activists. This is important, they are not, and have never been, Hippies. You see, Hippies believe in free love and herbal remedies. They wear flowy tie-dyed clothing and live on communes. My mother was too old to be a Hippie, in the late sixties, she was already married with two children. She married my father in 1976 because his lease was up and people would talk if he moved in with her and they weren't married. She had my sisters to think about.
That sounds odd, knowing what I do. You see, I would never call my mother selfish. I believe, perhaps wrongly, that she always put us first. My sister R would probably disagree. My mother dropped out of school to get married the first time, she was pregnant and her boyfriend proposed. This is what you did back then, although, not because her father came out with a shotgun. According to my uncle, my grandfather told her "If you don't love him, don't marry him." So, while we can blame my grandfather for many things, my mother's first marriage isn't one of them. Her first husband was a campus leader, but again, not a hippie. I wish I had known him in his youth. I imagine he must have been quite charismatic. Not only did he win over my mother, but he also recruited scores of college students to join in the fight for civil rights, equality, and peace. One of the students he recruited was my father. I can only imagine, because now he is the biggest wet blanket this side of Canada.
So my mother married this first husband, because it was the thing to do, and then had a second baby, to keep the first one company - my sisters. This is an awful thing to admit, but that's how she explains it. And R, being the second one, feels that this was selfish, or at least not in the best interest of the kids. R is probably right, she has definitely suffered more than my mother in this scenario.
So, like all of my mother's children, I was born in wedlock. My mother wore inexpensive and simple clothing from off of the rack at Alexander's, she even got her second wedding gown there. My father still pretty much dresses exclusively in L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer. My mother never smoked marijuanna and my father did only briefly. A glass of sherry before going to bed, was all the alcohol my parents usually had. And we didn't live in a commune, we lived in a twenty story apartment building in a less than desirable area of Brooklyn.
But activists there were/are. In fact, my father describes himself politically as a socialist or a marxist. He doesn't say communist because that model of economic system has been polluted by the Stalinists. My mother never talks about economic pollitics, but generally aligns herself with my father. My mother's issues are healthcare and education. These are actually socialist issues, but more importantly, they are motherly issues. You've probably noticed, that regardless of her past, I view my mother in a very Ceres cum Demeter light. Again, R would probably disagree, as would my eldest sister, H. But, as H regularly points out, I had a different mother than they did. My father mellowed her.
All through my childhood, politics were a major driving force. I remember being very dissapointed that I did not have a perfect attendance record in school - yes, I am a nerd. My parents would take me out of class so that we could go to demonstrations in Washington, D.C. I missed days for Pro-Choice rallies, I missed days for Anti-Reagan marches, I was absent from school so that my voice could be heard against apartheid.
You can't blame my parents for their optimism here. In their lifetimes they have seen segration in the United States reversed. Abortion was legalized, at least mostly. Apartheid ended in South Africa and Nelson Mandela came to speak at Yankee Stadium. I was there. The truth is, everyday people brought about these changes. But it doesn't seem to work anymore.
Now changes seem to be made behind our backs by lawyers in musty ill-lit libraries. Money exchanges hands and petitions are ignored. The president of the United States is unaware of the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, and subsequent amendments. New ways must be found to change the world. My parents have even begun to explore other options. My father just won an award for creating the new New York City high school Slavery curriculum. In closing, I would just like to recall another document of ideals upon which our country was built.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government
I hope you are all familiar with it. |
